Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in an interview yesterday that he thought Mark Felt, the recently self-proclaimed Deep Throat from the Watergate era, was "a troubled man," and certainly not a hero. "Anyone who spies on his own president...is not a hero," said Kissinger.
Felt was Deputy Director of the FBI at the time of the scandal. Kissinger said that if he disagreed with what Nixon was doing, he should have first resigned, and then gone to federal prosecutors with the information.
Excuse me? Who was at fault here -- the person who had the Democratic headquarters burglarized and bugged, or the person who realized this was wrong and leaked the information? In my mind Felt is a hero.
Ironically, Kissinger himself was once thought to be Deep Throat. John
Ehrlichman, one of the Nixon aides who was convicted and jailed after
the Watergate scandal, was apparently certain that Kissinger was Deep
Throat, according to magazine interviews in the 1980s.
Felt did exactly the same as Nixon: He authorized 9 illegal break-ins in 1972 and 1973 and was convicted of them in 1979.
Not exactly the same, but certainly not something that makes you proud of the way the government handled things in those days.
This from Wikipedia on the topic:
In the early 1970s, Felt oversaw a turbulent period in the FBI's history. The FBI was pursuing radicals in the Weather Underground who had planted bombs at the Capitol, the Pentagon, and the State Department. Felt, along with Edward S. Miller, authorized FBI agents to break into homes secretly in 1972 and 1973, without a search warrant, on nine separate occasions. These kinds of FBI burglaries were known as "black bag jobs". The break-ins occurred at five addresses in New York and New Jersey, at the homes of relatives and acquaintances of Weather Underground members, and did not lead to the capture of any fugitives. The use of "black bag jobs" by the FBI was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court on 19 June 1972 in the Plamondon case (407 US 297).
I did not read the text of Kissingers remarks. However, I am once again compelled to stand on the side with Art.
HOWEVER, the issue of whether Felt was a Hero or not is a question whic obfuscates the most challenging aspect of this new revelation.
Until more "Real" information becomes availab le to the public, we will not truly be able to judge this man or the issues involved in his actions. We are 30 years away from it. More to the point, few of us who lived through it have a proper perspective on the times. There is no doubt that things were quite different at the White House in those days Vis-a-vis public access and public scrutiny. Had I been in Felt's shoes, I do not know that I would have had the guts to bring this to the President himself or to any other officials for that matter.
I do think there is somewhat of a question as to why he did not resign and take it to the public where he would have been somewhat protected from any potential repraisals.
We must wait and see the developing story and then perhaps we will be able to judge whether he was a hero or an opportunist.
MORTSANITY
Baisicly everybody in power are horribler people to keep there job.
MAN I HATE BEING SUCH A CYNIC